


jury's still out on that one (drop the knife)

by lackingsoy



Category: Andromeda Six (Visual Novel)
Genre: Homoerotic Sparring, Insomnia, Lesbians in Space, Making important life-threatening decisions, Mostly just protective damon reznor, Pre-Canon, Unresolved Sexual Tension, a lovely combo we have here, damon "i do the tying" reznor vs calderon "i tied him down apparently" lynch, no Traveler in sight no Sir, the guy's kind of cursed, was that a pun? yesn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:28:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25161631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lackingsoy/pseuds/lackingsoy
Summary: For now he's lit up by the consoles and watching their micro-progress like a man pitching backward into the grave. Choosing the coffin and piling in rocks. Seleota laid out in an embryonic vacuum of black, and his eyes are still on Goldis. Zovack. The royals. The entire shitshow of a system and the whispers of a coup d'etat.Fucking whispers.Calderon's back is still to him when Damon decides leaving his blades behind was preventive.
Relationships: Calderon Lynch/Damon Reznor, damon reznor & calderon lynch
Comments: 12
Kudos: 18





	jury's still out on that one (drop the knife)

**Author's Note:**

> damon "i do the tying" reznor: *becomes the second chain in command to one calderon lynch*  
> me: 🤔🤔🤔 smth's not adding up..........

No downpour of soddy heat made breathing come easy, rare under this kind of sky. Cursa sky was the dimness of his blade that had long rusted around the edges from all the rain, turned up like a rolled eye.

No thunder made it easy to hear the rude scratch of metal catching on cheap fabric, shoved through with the grace of a boot squelching through mud. Nails crept past the leather over his knuckles to the blade to the opening in the gut, where the meat sucked in and out with bated breath. A futile attempt to hold the wound closed with ten fat fingers alone. It was very stupid.

The clouds, near black like dirt, shifted like stones at the bottom of the wheelbarrow on an uneven path. A loud clap followed another, jaunty and asynchronous. If they died, he didn't hear it. If they fell, he didn't feel the tug of his knife going with it.

“You'll need both hands, anyway,” a child’s voice. Patient, slick like a detached limb, faraway like a phantom touch. Thunder flashed over the eyes, mouth, and the craggy cleave in the gut that would eventually catch blood-water for rats if he left it for down here for too long. A body of water in another body. Ha, ha.

He tugged off too-large gloves and knelt to stick his fingers in, emptying out the insides, small hands ducking in and out like bird's beaks. His palms were where red and rust collected, filled out, dried at the seams. Dried. Dry-

It’s learned, this, a breath and then a start, eyes already over the room, on the walls, watching the darkness stretch out, corners and fingers and all. A dagger is already dug into the darkest crook, half-disappeared into the sheet of metal, making the space gleam a little. Nobody was there. 

He drops his arm. Damon keeps his room bare for a few good reasons.

He turns his eyes on the ceiling; takes a measured breath and lets go of the knife locked into his palm. Rolls onto his side, flattens back against the wall. Andromeda's engines hum against him, space-defying tech and titanium unyielding along the jut of his spine. 

He's in a ship in space, lightyears away from Cursa. 

He stares into the blankness of a solar system from the vantage point of his headboard until the headache builds behind his eyes. The crick in his left shoulder worsens when Damon rolls off the bed looking for his boots. Like a persistent sting.

It isn't even raining.

They aren't friends, exactly. He and the rest of the crew. They skirt around each other, avoiding direct collisions, working together only if Calderon dictates it. They function as parts to a whole, and that is new--strange, the idea of continuous teamwork, but they play off each other's strengths and weaknesses well enough. 

Damon likes it. The small, significant discovery of having a place. He and Bash in the kitchen; Ryona and he on a tracking mission; he and June out to collect a bounty; he and Ayame studying alternative cosmic pathways; he and Calderon weighing the pros and cons of mission plans.

Damon ducks into the main hallway. His boots makes no sound against the walkway's steel.

Calderon.

Autopilot would do fine. A technicality that only Ayame ever seems to use. Who, like the rest of them, is tucked into their cots and dead to the world for a few more hours, working off Teranium's solar cycle. Ryona will be up the soonest, then Bash, then June, then Ayame.

And Calderon still wouldn't have gone to sleep, navigating through the sheer indifference of space with singleminded intensity. Ayame would blast [_Mr. Sandman_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX45pYvxDiA)on the speakers on repeat until he finally locks himself in his soundproofed room with a grunt and a hiss.

Later. 

For now he's lit up by the consoles and watching their micro-progress like a man pitching backward into the grave. Choosing the coffin and piling in rocks. Seleota laid out in an embryonic vacuum of black, and his eyes are still on Goldis. Zovack. The royals. The entire shitshow of a system and the whispers of a coup d'etat. 

Fucking whispers. 

Calderon's back is still to him when Damon decides leaving his blades behind was preventive. His boots meet metal in a heavy thud a meter away from the co-pilot seat and Calderon gives a near imperceptible flux of his shoulders, a fully-body startle before being belted down. Another second's delay in turning his head, in leveling cool grey-blue eyes Damon’s way.

"Reznor," the Captain says, mundane insult for a greeting. There’s a flare of annoyance in the backs of his hands, an urge to sheathe a blade somewhere tender, and Damon slides them away, into his jeans.

"Lovely seeing you up, Cal. You know anybody could stab you like this."

"You mean just you." A vivid orange haze steeps across Calderon's face. He turns away, back facing Damon again. Something about that twists something else free from his chest.

At Calderon’s righthand side is a partially obscured holo-pad, flickering gold.

Another sting of annoyance. "And yet here I am, completely unarmed." Again--a preventive move. Really. 

The scoff moves the orange shadow over his cheekbones, accents the dark circles beneath his eyes. “Because you need your knives to be effective,” Calderon murmurs.

Hm. “You make an excellent point. It wouldn’t take much to incapacitate you right now.”

“Really.”

Access to the back is a checkpoint for any sharp object, but they both know that from experience. Calderon's chin had rocked up so the line of his throat rears a little, bared (to study Damon too readily), shoulders lax (too fatigued to remember what distrusting looks like), and distracted by Zovack (stupidly).

“Calling it in five.” Damon says, a twitch to his lips.

Calderon looks incredulous, eyebrow lifting as he gives Damon a once-over, teeth catching on his lips. Shaping up to something like a smile, and--maybe he's lost out on more rest than Damon thought. “ _Really._ You in your pajamas. Taking me down in less than ten minutes.”

To be fair, a fatigued Calderon is still a Calderon. It would be difficult, but certainly not impossible. 

“Just ten minutes? My, my, Cal--is that slander I hear?” Damon sidles over to Ayame’s co-pilot seat, kicking his boots up over the armrests and flashing his teeth over his knees. “Need me to go easy just for you, Commander?” 

Calderon makes a noise from the back of his throat. Damon would almost think it's agreement if not for the undercurrent of exasperation. “Cal or Commander, Reznor, you can’t have both.”

"Funny you should say that." Damon nudges the holo-pad up and off the dashboard with a boot, catching it single-handed. Something about Councils meeting in secret, something about newfound connections to Zovack, something about Orion being fucked up. So--nothing new.

He looks up and meets Calderon's eyes, traces the tension in his jaw and shoulders, and waves the device like the red flag it is, without care. "Our crew or Goldis, Captain. You can't have both." 

"We're not doing this right now," Calderon says, slowly, and Damon has to give it to him, trying to de-escalate.

"I'm up, you're up, nobody else is, seems like the perfect time. And if we don't do this now," Damon throws the holo-pad back on the dashboard, listening to the sound scatter across the empty bridge. "We won't be doing much of anything anymore."

Calderon is still, for a second--back ramrod-straight, before it breaks in a deep sigh and his eyes pinch shut. "Damon, it won't--it'll be quick."

"Your death or ours." Flat. 

"I have to know," Calderon says steadily enough, almost equally as dismissive as Damon's tone. Damon hates that for a moment. 

"Easy. They're royally fucked."

Calderon doesn't breathe for a moment, chest locked, eyes still closed. "The Royal Guard wouldn't let that happen."

"You mean the people who threw you in jail and sentenced you to death? Those people?" Damon sneers. "Go to fucking sleep, Calderon. There isn't anything you can do." 

Calderon's eyes flare open, find Damon's, and goes sideways in something about as calm as chaos. He turns away from the console and the screens, hand hovering over the autopilot controls, knuckles white with strain. "And if I can?" His voice, flat and hardly stoic now. Space is too empty and the stars could care less about how their beds aren’t slept in. 

Damon takes his boots off the armrest and slips completely off the chair, watching Calderon watch him. With an edge of smile he doesn't feel but is most certainly all tooth and nail, he rolls his shoulders and says:

"Take off the suit, Cal. Let’s go a round." 

Sleek, bare walls. Hardly clinical, the distance of an empty room this huge, made not to house but to contain. More than one, usually. Oppo had the walls and floor of the place enforced for two completely modded humans. Damon and Calderon aren’t enhanced in quite the same way, in as many areas, but they can come close. Very, very, close.

They haven't sparred like that, like they meant it, in quite a while.

Damon lets Calderon have the view of his back for the duration of their walk. Not even a second into Damon flicking the lights on does Calderon make to grab for his neck.

Chivalry is dead. “Cheeky,” Damon says, elbowing his gut before shoving a meter of distance between them. 

“Courtesy,” Calderon offers, the look in his eyes openly hostile and just so from that military-ingrained condescension. The empty pressure of a hilt, and something too sharp for irritation snarls hot at the back of Damon's throat.

“I’m not that easy,” Damon says, and attacks. 

He fights like he’s fresh off the streets, aiming for openings and making them like he could pry them free from Calderon's body like still-beating organs through a sack of ribs. He gets behind Calderon and aims for his neck like Calderon had, but Calderon counters him: grabs hold of his offending arm and flips him. Damon lets himself tuck and roll, already halfway into a defensive position by the time Calderon is on him again.

Without his knives and daggers and coat, Calderon might actually have the upper hand. But Damon can work with the lesser odds.

He always has.

Calderon moves like he’s never left the ranks of the royal posse, inflexible and rigid and precise--and predictable, until Damon’s eyes pinch shut at the overhead glare and Calderon hooks the heel of his foot against Damon’s leg and floors him in a move dirtier than Bash’s shirts on maintenance days.

Pain bursts from the flat of his unprotected back. Surprise takes a breath to emit and wicked satisfaction makes his thoughts go dark and his lips jerk.

Good, he thinks. Damon scrambles onto all fours and launches forward.

Limbs connect, for the most part: awakening to nicks and scrapes and things that will ache later. Damon's up against the wall before Calderon's down on the floor before they’re grappling for deadlock once more.

Calderon's kick sends Damon across the length of the room. His blows are heavy, always heavy--and Damon rolls with them, burns of not-yet bruises over his thighs and arms and ribs, and he bites down on a remark about royal lapdogs and opts for a blow to the throat that catches and glances off, but Calderon chokes all the same.

“Bastard," Calderon manages to hiss out, hand cradling the line of his throat, and Damon feels the crude pressure of a smile against his face as he sinks down to his knees.

"Want me to take it down a notch?" Damon says without thinking, voice skimming along the sides of a purr. 

"Don't get ahead of yourself," Calderon says, before lunging. A thrust and another punch and a failed grab and an elbow to the face. Damon ducks down and away. “Whose getting ahead of who?”

He catches the cut of Calderon’s chin, watching as the blue eyes snap to his quick as lightning. Ready to pull out teeth. "Shut up.” A knee darts out and Damon pitches sideways, catches himself on two hands.

"Come now, you like it," he says, sliding himself into a crouch, feeling his nose sting with the fresh release of blood over dried blood. Damon watches Calderon pick himself up, wipe his hands off his undershirt, and stare Damon down.

He thinks it's a smile on his face. For the most part. "You like _me_."

"Don't put words in my mouth," Calderon says, voice rough from Damon's earlier throat punch, and that sends something too close to a shiver down Damon's spine. 

Calderon tries to get him on the floor again--same trick, new angle. Damon twists out of reach and feels the press of his smile into his cheek. No air, no space, no time. Yes, he can work with this. Damon isn’t out of breath, but he feels the pulse of adrenaline like a clutch on his chest, patches of sweat making his shirt stick to his back. He almost laughs.

Or something worse, because Calderon’s teeth flash and his anger is a steep hill to die on. “Is this fucking funny to you?” 

Loose-limbed blows for a rigid form of a man? A Goldis man playing space pirate? “A little,” Damon says, and the hiss of breath could be from Calderon’s hand or his mouth, winding through the motions of words and bad words and-

“Fuck you, Reznor,” spat with the kind of fight Damon loves to engage in. The distance between them is three-feet nothing, closed by one stride and a hand fisting into Calderon’s shirt. Blood must be smeared over his mouth because he tastes the salt of it when he says, “Maybe,” and Calderon’s face goes slack, steel surface and still so many cracks.

Damon has him down in one, elbow pressed into the notch of Calderon’s throat like the thin thread of one of his longer knives. His entire body a lever. Sweat bristles at his back, nape.

Nothing compares to the look on Calderon’s face. Red and twisted. Somewhere along the way Damon had nailed him in the face, his nostrils darkened with blood.

“Outstanding, Cal. I don't even think you made the ten-minute mark.”

Dark eyes leer back up at him, and Damon feels the flex of a fight in him because Calderon’s arms are pressed beneath Damon’s knees and shifting. Sweat makes it hard to keep a firm grip. “Ah-ah-ah,” the harder press of Damon's elbow, pushing into the chokehold that bit sooner. Without a knife, paralyzing a man takes that much longer. Manually applied and monitored.

Damon bends his head, leveraging his weight, and smiles at the hate in Calderon’s eyes. “Don’t breathe too easy, Commander. The crew or Zovack? _Choose_.” 

Calderon eyes go lidded, the heave of his chest gone, the small stutter of breath stilled. Something ends, then. Damon takes the pressure off, straightening up, and Calderon gasps, dragging air in.

“ _No_ ,” Calderon answers, choked with it. 

Damon sits back and looks down at him, cold disdain sliding into place. He wants his knives. “Get your head out of your ass, Cal. I’m not your second-in-command to watch you piss in a pot you forgot was your grandma’s immortal ashes. Your little courtesy visit is a death warrant.” 

“Don’t,” a jerk, aborted, “Fucking lecture me. I need to _know_.” 

“Know? Know what? That Goldis will be ruined soon? News flash, Cal,” a strip of teeth, bared in a smile, “It was fucked since the beginning. You shouldn't need me to tell you that.”

“You don’t think,” anger is hot in his eyes, vivid and ugly, twisting his face into a thing deeply recognizable. “You don’t think I know that?”

"Priorities, Cal." Damon shifts, jerking his hips just so, and Calderon's breath hitches. "Look at you. Defeated by a mere street rat." 

Calderon looks at him, frustration and prideful anger flaring once more, before something cooler slides into place. Something determined.

"Please," he says, quietly.

Damon stares down at him and his wide, blue eyes. If he pries them open, he would probably find something worthwhile--something incredibly precious, like rare jewels, a spot of clean ocean, or a small, working oasis in the dead of desert. A streak of significance against the rest of the indifference, maybe.

Maybe.

Calderon doesn't move, watching his face; nostrils black with blood, scraped up hands floored in a meticulous gesture, chest guided by the faintest breath. Damon wonders what this man's beating heart would look like.

"Desperate is not a good look on you," he says eventually, and pulls himself free of Calderon's body.

He's at the door by the time Calderon says: "Thanks."

His bones suddenly ache. "You owe me one, Cal. And you can't owe anybody anything if you're dead," and here Damon looks back and smiles, clean and rabid. "So stay alive, yeah? I'll take care of the rest."

"I'll take June and Ryona." Calderon replies, as if knowing what Damon would say next. His eyes glint. "We'll be fine."

Damon scoffs, turning around to face the captain who had by now straightened himself out, patting down his clothes like the stiff he is.

Damon lifts a finger, aims it at the general direction of Calderon's battered body. "Get some sleep before we see how _f_ _ine_ you are." 

A slow smile works itself across Calderon's face, pulling the loose trail of dried blood to the side on his face. He looks crazed. It both annoys and thrills Damon. "Fine," Calderon gives, making his way to the door.

As he moves to make past Damon, all faint sweat and blood and fatigue, Calderon lifts a tentative hand and taps Damon under the chin. His eyes crinkle down at him, warmed blue. "You go to bed too."

Damon knocks his hand away, feeling the callouses of Calderon's fingers like scars on his skin. "Shut up. I'm not the one who stays up for days on end like an actual idiot fantasizing about the end of my home planet."

A laugh, rough and awkward and--stunning. "Don't you? About Cursa?"

His bones ache, again, like a distant shot in the dark, but Damon catches the blue in his peripheral, glinting like a frozen star, and smiles. "Wouldn't you like to know, weather boy?"

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like damon's slept with everybody on andromeda at least once, or at least attempted to. like c'mon.


End file.
